Viewers compete in a live virtual tournament that takes place after the This Morning show. In the game, viewers compete to find the answers to simple trivia questions in an evolving grid of letters, with a range of prizes available to the winners of each tournament. The game quickly rose through the ranks, topping the App Store as the number one free game and number one trivia game, beating out big titles like Wordle, Roblox, Candy Crush, Pokémon Go and FIFA Football.
The game has already secured the #1 spot in both the Free Games App Store and the Trivia Games App Store. As well as over 1.6 million minutes of play.
The partnership between ITV and Live Tech Games aims to bring new entertainment to UK audiences, allowing viewers to be part of the game using their mobile phones, rather than just following the action on their TV screens.
In 2021, ITV invested £2.5million in Live Tech Games through its Studio 55 Ventures arm. It says the investment and support would have given Live Tech Games the opportunity to work with ITV and interact on a much larger scale with its extensive UK audience. After the investment, Live Tech Games piloted the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, Roshambo Live, to keep viewers engaged after the end of the daily broadcast “This Morning”.
“We are thrilled to announce the launch of WordSurge on ITV’s This Morning,” said Samuel Worsley, co-founder and co-CEO of Live Tech Games. “We cannot thank ITV enough for the support it has given Live Tech Games and we look forward to the results this fun, entertaining and competitive game will produce. We’re excited to bring our new word game to a different audience and can’t wait to see player reactions to WordSurge.”
Bhavit Chandrani, Director of Digital and Creative Partnerships at ITV, added: “ITV and the This Morning team are thrilled to be working with Live Tech Games to bring this form of second-screen content to our viewers. This is a really exciting new form of interactive entertainment that increases our reach with younger audiences and creates innovative sponsorship opportunities for brands.”